I think the guy who wrote that article should learn to use his spell checker more frequently.

woof, woof: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_one's_own_dog_food

I've read a bunch of these 'become a better dev' musings and I like this one the best. Most of the posts I've seen (other than this and Hanselman's) seem to assume that burying one's nose in books will bring about some sort of magical transformation.

I have yet to see anyone mention eating one's own 'dog food' though. Not that I do it much, but going on a strict diet of daily steaming lumps of your own dog food seems important. Humility and the ability to prevent defensive posturing when interacting with users are essential traits for a 'good' developer. Eating yr doggy food can help bring that about.

good find-- frustring.. i love using string.IsNullOrEmpty.. too bad

yesthatmcgurk -- re: "And how much pot do you have to smoke to get the paranoids so bad " -- I don't know what do you suggest?

Kathleen's article regards the growth of the framework itself and our core development IDE -- not the supplemental libraries and tools you mention. Lambda expressions are just one example (a good one if you wish to trivialize her points). I think there are many more examples that bolster her points. Examples such as: SilverLight/WPF, WF (why isn't it WWF anyway?) -- they could've gotten Roddy Roddy Piper as a mascot, WCF, Domain Specific Languages, Jasper, Astoria and other stuff I can't think of plus others I haven't heard of. Oh yeah.. the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) -- Ruby & IronPython. Then there's Orca/Vs 2008 LINQ & DLINQ -- um.. Vista, AJAX, Expression Blend, SQL Server 2005 & the upcoming 2008 release.

Feeling less competent now? I do. Should we give up by either staying inert with what we know or start driving a cab for a living? Or should we have no lives and learn as much as possible? Other than the last option, those are all tenable solutions (in my view) -- just as specialization, the option I prefer, is. Another option is to go the way Mike Gunderloy has and forgo Microsoft by pouring a fresh cup of coffee & learning a new platform (http://www.afreshcup.com/2006/12/9/what-s-going-on-here) , http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000845.html .

Anyway, I thought it was refreshing to see an article where someone acknowledged the anxiety that all this change can provoke -- in a way, it helps to alleviate anxiety (at least that’s what reading the article did for me).